I don't think that whether real students are interested in a topic is related to how well that choice of study does for them in the real world.

International relations, anthropology, women's studies, psychology, etc., are all real subjects that students are actually interested in. Some small fraction of the people who study them actually go on to do something near-related to those topics. Many (most?) others go on to work recruiters, office managers, in call centers (etc), immediately throwing away their studies and never revisiting them.

"online marketing" degrees are just part of this category, not anything special in themselves.

The trend hopefully is not just in how study happens but what people choose to study, because a lot of time and money is being wasted in things that never get used, because a lot of students have no real interests, and we teach them if they choose and go to college for anything - anything at all - then they'll magically do well. This is a lie and a disservice. We should be pushing people towards STEM and trade schools. Hopefully this situation helps do that.

Most business courses are literally fake. The stuff being taught was invented in order to be taught. Quite a lot of it is learning the meaning of terms that were invented in order to be taught. It's not that there aren't real business subjects. Finance and accounting are real subjects. Economics is a real subject, in the sense that philosophy is a real subject. Statistics, etc.

The trend is (and has been for decades) to teach mostly (or only) fluff courses.

The bottom third of these things are functional equivalents of diploma mills. Ask business graduates over a pint. Most will admit it.

In my experience "International Relations" classes teach very little that's actually valuable. I think there's a common in mistake in thinking at because X is important, then university classes about X are useful. There are a lot of subjects that are important but where the study of it in academia (at least at the undergraduate level, but I suspect higher up as well) isn't handled well at all.

I think the mistake that a lot of people make, however, is thinking that this is merely a humanities vs. STEM issue. There also seems to be a lot (though perhaps not quite as much) useless classes in the STEM fields as well.

Worst of all, I've seen very little interest in academia (both STEM and the humanities) in whether or not their way of teaching is effective - its simply assumed to be, and that's the end of the discussion much of the time. It's claimed that academia fosters critical thinking, but there often seems to be a dearth of critical thinking from those who are within it.

I didn’t find any of it relevant at the time. Fast forward 25 years and now that my IT work is distributed full-remote global operations, it turns out my IR foundation gives me a unique [perspective] and VERY influential position in an Engineering org.

So there is a certain long-term value in cross-training in this way.

Also, many of the things that were covered in IR classes weren't just useless, but more often than not turned out to be entirely detached from reality. For instance, focusing on things like Thomas Huntington vs. Thomas Friedman (neither of who seem to have had a great track record or understanding of the world).

It ended up being a powerful ‘soft’ asset in a transition to engineering management, by virtue of being the staffmember able to identify and resolve problems which originated in cultural and linguistic domains.

One does not need IR training to (say) socially engineer a budget prioritization for sending engineers on overseas exchanges, but I feel it influenced my thinking in this regard.

This forms what I think is the underlying thread here. For those that aren't as flexible and creative in applying their talents and education, most of these classes really do end up being useless, and for them, a waste of money in the long run.

If you're already capable, chances are that no matter your field of study, you're going to land somewhere that you can find a way to use your knowledge; but this really seems to me more a case of interest and driven/natural critical thinking skills than it is a reflection of the content of the classes. Those that apply themselves can find niches to sharpen their skills, whereas those opportunities aren't necessarily sought out by everyone.

So, in effect, while some individuals taking classes of any sort, even poorly taught, might have the fervor to find a path towards enrichment, not all students will have this experience. And this leads to the "basket weaving" degrees for others: subjects that, while not generally irrelevant a priori, are generally irrelevant for many experientially.

There is another aspect which I will add: the ‘softest’ parts of the liberal arts curriculum — International Relations would fit here — was until recently reserved for aristocrats. The children of farmers and factory workers would ostensibly have no use in learning The Great Game. The best players of the game are those who need no employment.

Those of us from anything but the uppermost classes back then would be stumbling into the edges of a world they can dimly perceive, to serve as clerks at best.

Even with decades of professional experience as a diplomat or analyst, your sample size of countries and international situations will be very small. Having both a theoretical understanding of the underlying dynamics, and a broad view of the whole problem space as it has been explored historically, is qualitatively different from the lessons you get on the job.

He was supposedly in his 80s but appeared 60. His ancestors were some kind of lords of the forests; his father was responsible for training Gurkhas, though he himself preferred the company of the muhajadeen as a boy (photos provided).

He displayed gold disks which could buy humans at certain markets, and spoke of tribes which taught him how to travel in Dreamtime. It was literally thrilling stuff, all too fantastic to believe if not for the artifacts....

From the POV of a student entering a job market, anthropology or international studies may be completely useless. But the student gained real knowledge that is useful for some jobs (even if they're not pursuing them). And it can be useful in their life. To use a CS analogy, I never needed calculus or control theory during my $dayjobs, but I use them for myself, to better understand the world and occasionally on hardware hobby projects.

Meanwhile, those fake degrees are literally scams. I.e. students (and their families) are being scammed for their money. The topics are self-referential (invented to be taught), and exist in order to justify spending few years on them, so that the degree rewards putting in work - which makes that degree valuable for employers in the first place. And during the course of that degree, various entities - universities, textbook publishers, etc. - are bleeding students dry. It's not just a degree mill, it's a money printer. The degree becomes purely proof of work, and on top of wasted years of your life, you also have to pay for it.

Please provide examples. I thought Communications was bullshit until I read a textbook. Cyber security is not a bullshit field even though actual practitioners hold degree programmes in it in extremely low esteem. What are some examples of business or other degrees that are in some objective sense valueless? Criminal justice degrees or fire science ones are hazing credentialism but they’re not literally worthless and the research they’re based on is real.

At least humanities courses teach students to write. They're basically essay writing classes.

The one who'd dropped out was clearer and more consistent in their writing than the BA in English. Perhaps math enforces a level of pragmatism that the humanities don't?

Anecdotal, of course, but I've seen this pattern often.

I disagree in that many of the other topics have a real academic history and tradition, involve the expression of genuinely important ideas. Being immersed in that for years has value: in the facts learned, the overall experience, and an appreciation for aspects of the world that you might not have understood or appreciated before.

The fact that that arts degrees often have a very good return on investment /might/ be because they are a waste of time and irrelevant but it seems like the preponderance of evidence indicates that they are not a complete waste of time. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/collegeroi/

Pushing students towards STEM and trade schools is probably not a good idea, creating markets that actually work properly and then letting the students sort all that out for themselves seems like a better way.

Am I reading the chart correctly? If so, I don't see how your link favors your argument.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/business/liberal-arts-ste...

There isn't a crisis of unemployed liberal arts majors in America or the world, there is a reason for that. Of course there are a lot of people that have convinced themselves that there is such a crisis!

I also agree that it's a problem that a lot of people are going into college just because they don't have any other ideas and it's seen as a respectable thing to do. I think the main cause is that our society doesn't give nearly enough support to people entering the workforce, and is oddly determined for people to move from being a full-time student to a full-time worker, with nothing in between.

Might as well cut the S and M off that because most people who get a science degree probably aren't working in the filednwithout higher education and even the there's so few jobs available. Most people with math education probably aren't working directly in mathematics, but at least you can make the argument that there are other fields where math is related enough to be somewhat useful.

I think while the correlation may be weaker than what some claim, it is still there. To put it another way, I have seen very few cases of students who hated the field, were force-fed it and then would turn it a successful career. And a few that would do that tend to look for opportunities to change course. Being really interested in a subject is a great encouragement to acquire deep knowledge, not just a good grade. And such deep knowledge can bring benefits for the rest of the life.

As an example: I have a PhD in math but "tossed it" and went to work writing software and algorithms. My employers never cared about my PhD. I never used much of the "PhD" math I learned in grad school and I probably forgot most of it. Computing a homology group? Topological entropy? Forget it.

But was the PhD a waste? I do not think so! As a side effect of being in grad school, teaching undergrad classes and arguing with friends doing math and physics I became friends with many fields and learned techniques that still serve me well. So definitely no regrets for me for spending 5 years learning things I did not directly use afterwards.

I do agree with your last point -- we should not be telling students that anything they study will lead them to success after graduation. They should choose a field with some applications. But among the multitude of such fields they should choose one they genuinely like. My 2c.

You are drawing a line that is convenient to your argument.

I have an engineering degree, and worked for a bunch of years in my discipline. As part of the degree, I had to take 3 calculus courses and one differential equations course. Never needed them on the job. I took 2 circuits courses, 3 electronics courses, 2 communications courses, 2 E&M courses, 1 control theory course, and 1 microcontrollers course - all part of my major. About half were mandatory (not electives). Of these, only 2 courses were relevant for my job. I could have done it as effectively as I did without taking all those other courses.

Amongst engineers, my engineering experience is not an outlier. My experience is the norm. Even while I was in college that was the feedback I would get from people in industry: Most of the engineering courses are useless for your job, and getting the degree is merely a formality and not much of an indicator of knowledge/expertise. The whole "a degree shows you can commit to something for a dedicated amount of time" is mostly a post hoc justification.

Your argument that a "small fraction" of people who study them actually go on to use them applies very well to engineering degrees. I suspect they would apply equally well to CS degrees as well. I mean, I'm the perfect example. I took very little CS in school, but make a living as a SW professional.

Most people I know who got math degrees (but not a PhD) use almost none of it in their jobs - even the technical jobs. Ditto for physics. Should we do away with these as well?

In general, look at all the people who have a BS degree in something other than CS and are working in the SW industry. Look at their degrees. While engineers like me often actually do go on to become engineers, for probably all other majors (math, physics, literature, philosophy, etc) you'll find they rarely get a job in their discipline.

I've lived in countries where those subjects are usually not offered in universities. It really sucks. You usually end up with 2 scenarios:

A class full of people who don't care about the subject but are taking it because society has deemed that what they are interested in is not to be taught in universities. This often results in a lowering of the standards to appease them (who are often in the majority). Indeed, many math majors in the US complain about this - calculus, diff eq and linear algebra are usually taught to cater to engineers, and not math majors.

Or you'll get the other extreme, where the standards are made unnecessarily tight to keep those people out, but in effect also then prevent decent students who are interested in the topic from studying it.

Almost all math graduates at my undergrad ended up going into (a) finance as quants, (b) PhD program, (c) data or SWE-related job in tech [me], or (d) some kind of K-12 math educator job.

Probably 30% PhD, 30% SWE/data in tech, 20% quant, 20% K-12 education. The people who did K-12 wanted to do that for much of their life typically, and the people who did PhD either (50%) knew that's exactly what they wanted to or, or really didn't know what they wanted to do.

Perhaps our program doesn't reflect the story on a national level though. Unsure there.

I mean thinking of a typical non specialized business BA here (Germany) the math and statistics classes are pretty useful, as is the basic economics primer. The required law courses and tax related courses are pretty useful. Accounting, finance and controlling are useful as well and so are marketing (mostly math/data analysis), strategy, project management and production management (usually operations research centric but also covers quality management). HR seems fairly meh unless you want to go into HR (as the most relevant stuff is already covered in law).

The typical electives cover more in depth of the above and sometimes business information systems, psychology, programming and the like.

And there's some other stuff that's pretty useful like negotiation classes or case studies (if they cover interesting topics).

As I said, I have one of these degrees, and have hired and worked with many people with such degrees.

First, I agree that the math and (particularly) the statistics classes are useful. Finance and accounting too, in theory, though the vast majority do not seem to internalize much. Business pretty minimal though. A 3-4 years business degree comes with less math education than the first year of an engineering degree, chemistry, physics, etc.

Also.. the majority of business degrees today allow students to avoid most math altogether... and most students do this. The whole thing is continuously moving downmarket. Most business degrees (graduate & undergraduate) are not recognised BAs anymore.

"The market" wants easy degrees with no math. They also don't want accounting or finance. This leaves just the nonsense.

IMO, at this point, most business degrees are less useful than history, philosophy, etc. Graduate salaries are about the same.

Why does it matter if they’re BA or something else? And recognised by who?

And obviously a postgrad business degree is not going to be a BA... because that’s an undergrad degree.

I think if you’re saying a MBA from a reputable school is useless I think you’re being really really silly. I see the opportunities these degrees give you and they are in a most literal sense extremely useful. They also seem academically valuable to me, with fascinating lectures by extremely well qualified people, and visiting amazing institutions.

The only place, where I've seen this super-useless business-degrees actually was a private uni, selling a "marketing" bachelors. Not sure, what the person (acquaintance of my sister) learned there, but apparently it didn't even know a lot about the internet as a marketplace, last time I talked...

Counterpoint: most software developers I've known.

I know people who went to college, but lived at home with their parents "to save money". In reality, they didn't need to save the minimal room and board fees of a state school; they were mostly just cowards. They are the people that haven't changed at all since high school. They're the people that are afraid of everything in the world outside their small circle.

I guess that's fine for them, but I would want more for myself, and for my children.

I did exactly that. Lived at home, attended college, and also worked nearly full time to pay for school. I graduated with nearly no debt, and the the day after graduating college moved out with a good job.

Not sure how that makes someone a coward or afraid to go outside their small circle. Some of the people I went to HS with all went to the same big state school so they could actually stay in the their small circle. Once done, they moved back to where we grew up, are still in the same small circle, and have/had large college debt to go along with it.

I haven't seen anyone from HS in over 15 years, and have lived and traveled all over. I would be cautious to paint people making financially prudent decisions with such a broad brush.

Like the person playing in a local band, telling me "I moved out" - me: "nice, but how can you afford that" - "I work as a tutor" - "that 400€ is not supporting your apartment" - "oh, no, my father is paying for that". yessss.

I would really liked to have moved out too for the aforementioned reasons (lived in a small city next to uni-town, where there's basically nothing happening and except for my small circle, I didn't find HS people very interesting...), but basically all the great experiences cost money and/or time of which there is none, if you really do it in a financially sound way while studying something MINTy... (and I doubt that feeling like a slave is the glorious experience).

Note: probably I was a coward in the beginning for not moving away, because then I could have gotten state-assistance and cheap student dorms... Though that's kind of a though choice, when your uni of choice is basically the academically best around in your country... (and frankly, at this point I didn't have a lot of people telling me, that this not necessarily is, what you want in a bachelors degree...)

I think many of the people who weren’t well off only afforded this experience by taking on debt.

Besides, there’s more ways than just college to have that “real” growth experience. Military, mission work, peace corps. Hell, I’d even argue these are more of an experience because they aren’t built on the somewhat artificial backdrop of universities that can insulate you from the “real” world without all the debt downside

Military has actual big price in people who join it. Veterans do have issues to adjust back to civilian society. Which is basically euphemism for whole host of serious issues. Military families divorce often and their famillies do have actual issues due to frequent moving or partner long term away. Domestic violence rates are high.

The whole growth experience is leaving quite a few people in difficult situations after.

And it rubs me wrong when it is framed as "less insulated the 'real' world. It is as insulated as it gets. Or as "real life" or "real growth" as opposed to "not real life" in quite common experience of either college or job or having familly that functions in more normal way.

It is called sacrifice for a reason.

This is true. It’s not a cakewalk for everybody. But the dichotomy of some of those difficult situations is they can both foster growth and simultaneously stress is an individual. I think some would say that stress/sacrifice is a necessary precursor for that growth. Unfortunately, sometimes the stress exceeds the individuals coping mechanisms.

The book Tribe gives an interesting perspective on military service. The author wrote it after his personal growth (and stress) from creating the documentary Restrepo about the outpost of the same name in Afghanistan.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/02...

And it is not in your individual controll to engage with experiences or not. Being soldier is opposite of making individual choices. You do a lot in groups, group conformity and group cohesion are bug things, you get told what to do.

I don’t know your age or experience, but what you said doesn’t ring true to me. If you’re deployed to a non-combat zone you don’t just get a day off every couple weeks. You have liberty most nights and weekends, at least if you’re not actually stationed on a ship.

It’s no different than college. You can be the person who just holes up and plays video games, or just go out in the same groups without exposing yourself to different ideas, or you can get out of your comfort zone. I’ve known people who made the most of their free time by regularly volunteering in local clinics/emergency rooms, lived outside of base in the city with locals, exposed themselves to local culture etc. There’s more freedom than many think. And this is coming from lower enlisted ranks of one of the branches with a reputation of being more disciplined and strict.

I think that if you have good relationships with parents, do your part in the house chores, the school nearby is actually good, there is absolutely nothing wrong with staying at home. If you cant wait till you leave the family home, then maybe it is not that you are super mature, maybe simply relationships in your family sux. Which is not a badge of honor.

To add, living outside of campus have one big advantage - freaking uninterrupted sleep time.

How dare you place judgement on other people's circumstances. Moving away from your family to immerse yourself in your studies is certainly one way to grow as a person, but far from the only way.

Maybe someone has to take care of a family member and can't realistically do that, even if they wanted to. However, taking classes while also taking care of a family member, is that a coward or someone strong?

Maybe someone already knows the path they want to take in life and they see the cost of room and board as an unnecessary expense they can instead save to buy a condo elsewhere. Is that person a coward for being focused or strong?

Maybe someone needs a familiar support network such as a strong family to thrive academically. Is that person a coward for being self aware or strong?

How many people did you meet your freshman year who you thought in the back of your mind, wow they really should have taken a gap year. All they did was waste money on tuition and room and board while they partied and failed courses. Are all these people strong for making lifelong friendships against their better judgement or cowards?

So many reasons why people chose the path they do, I could keep going on here. I would have thought someone getting a liberal arts education would be open minded to other experiences. It sounds like you judge people who not follow in your footsteps, and for that, how dare you!

this might be true of the people you know, but I hope you don't think it holds in general. at the state school I went to, room and board cost the same amount as the in-state tuition itself. for a lot of families, this is not "minimal". if your parents have a spare room and already cook dinner every night, this almost doubles the cost of your education.

if your parents treat you like an adult (ie, you control your schedule, no curfew, etc.), there's no reason why you can't get the full college experience as a commuter.

I agree that the spending time immersed in the university environment is one of the most important parts of the college experience, but you don't have to get expensively kenneled on campus to do that, just spend time on campus with interesting people and interesting organizations.

I would only suggest most people deal with on-campus housing if it is being primarily paid for by a scholarship or grant they won't have to pay back and/or their circumstances don't offer a good alternative. If you're attending a school where there is an option for family (or whatever) that can provide you with a non-distracting environment and a _short_ commute for cheap, do that for a year. Once you establish a cohort of known-reliable friends with similar needs, rent with them, or pick up a modest apartment. I will say, IMO, renting with unknown quantity randos from a campus-predator slumlord _is_ a worse option to university housing, it includes both sets of disadvantages.

I'm also of the opinion that you have a substantial number of gen-eds you still have to take (not covered by APs, etc.), and they won't be paid for by a scholarship, do a year or so at a community college. It will be cheaper and better than the university service courses - gigantic sections taught from materials outsourced to ed-tech carpetbaggers, supervised by disinterested graduate students with alarming English skills, optimized to extract tuition from kids who statistically won't make it. I say this after years of discovering my students who took their early calculus sequence at community college, embarrassingly, tend to be more mathematically literate than the ones who did it at the university. I'm not yet convinced if that is because the ones that had the maturity to do it that way are predisposed and/or usually a little older, or the quality of the early sequence at [intentionally unnamed university] are really that poor.

I suspect room and board costs what it does compared to tuition simply because putting undergrads in a big lecture just doesn’t cost all that much. In addition, the tuition for resident students gets subsidized, while the room and board generally doesn’t.

My husband and I both worked our way through college. I didn't get the social experience at school. There is nothing like working for your degree to keep you laser focused on the reason why you are going to college.

We were both reasonably paid for working class jobs as he was a machinist and I was an electronic technician. Post graduate was so much better - he in mechanical engineering and I in software engineering.

Most of our socialization came on the job. We were both lucky enough to work for great companies with wonderful people.

I went to a top-tier 4-year university, and did develop several life-long friendships, many of which have led to introductions to other people, which have further increased my social and professional circles. It'd be easy to say if I hadn't gone to college, I wouldn't have that now, and, well, that's actually true... but it's missing the point. I'd still be me, and I'd still have the same drive to meet people and take advantage of opportunities. My life would be different, certainly, but I doubt it'd be less socially fulfilling.

The one exception was they knew about me even though I didn't know about them. Halfway through one of my interviews I realized that I knew the interviewer by reputation.

Such strong words! In many countries, it is totally normal to stay at home with your parents and attend a college in your hometown, especially if it is a big enough city with many colleges.

Exactly. This comment is quite insensitive even if ignoring the tuition costs in America. There are other reasons for living at home with your parents while going to university. I personally had to do this due to severe chronic health problems. I was 100% capable of going to university full time while working part time. I just needed to be able to live at home.

In reality, required room and board (usually for freshmen) is merely a way for colleges to make money. The whole "experience" angle is a pretext, but not the real reason. I'm glad my undergrad did not require it.[1] I don't doubt some people benefit from it, but I'm sure most don't. Anecdotally, those who stayed in dorms were more likely to party a lot more and be less focused on studies - lots of distractions. I personally knew quite a few who eventually moved off campus for the sole purpose of eliminating those distractions because their grades were dropping.

[1] I did not stay with family, I paid rent in an apartment. Definitely cheaper. The amusing thing is we folks who had our own apartment generally perceived those who stayed on campus as being less mature. They had meal plans, etc, whereas we were responsible for cooking, etc. I forget what else those who lived on campus had spoon fed to them, but it went beyond just meals.

Small state schools are closer to that, but any of the bigger schools seem to think that because students get easy access to excessive amounts of cheap loans, they can be extravagant in budgeting- sports facilities, gyms, administration, etc.

I guess you could say the same for a publicly-funded system, but at least there the funding is limited and controlled. A lot of people sadly won't blink twice at taking out a larger college loan, even if it'll saddle them with crippling debt later on.

1. Anecdotal evidence that you know a few people that didn't grow up for whatever reason does not mean everyone is like that.

2. In most asian culture, people live with their parents for the entirety of life. Somehow according to you more than half the world's population is cowards. I digress because we're talking about american colleges and living in America but it still baffles me that someone educated like you would think there is nothing wrong with a stupid argument using selection bias.

As a non Asian (with an admittedly fictional Asian pseudonym) I happen to be a member of a Facebook group called Subtle Asian Traits. It’s an extremely popular group, largely made up of young high school to late-20s Asian-Americans (and expats living in other western countries). The most common and persistent theme is the tension between westernized Asian kids and their traditional parents. These kids are desperate to get away from this controlling influence. They find temporary relief and camaraderie by joking about how extremely strict their parents are.

I dunno honestly. Maybe it is different elsewhere, but the college was the most uniform place I have been at. I am not complaining, I liked the experience and did fit in. But it was not diversity in literally any sense of the word.

While the other was a generic and bland sadness that suck the life out of the room and "binge drinking" is the closest form to a local culture and even things which should be a source of culture like the arts are just another box to be checked on somebody's list for posturing's sake.

Was it religious school which went secular in practice or offically? I know some who suspect that the number one reason for that blandness is former religious school that lost the fundamentalist character which drove out the heterodox and was then left with a despeciated monocultural void.

I think for better or for worse what actually drives the selection of people determines the resulting culture and diversity.

But pretty much everyone around you was, well, college student of roughly same age. And plus everyone was focused on math, computer science or something similar. The university itself had other fields of study, obviously, but they had own building so practically you rarely really interacted with each other.

The city it was in obviously had sports clubs, entertainment and whatnot where you could meet non-college students or people of different age or people who study something different. You was not forced to close yourself into some kind university bubble.

But university itself necessary collects similar people at one place. Because everyone there has to be college student and has similar choice of study.

I don't know when the last time you've lived in dorms was, but they're glorified summer camps for adolescents. Having meal plans and an RA aren't exactly badges of courage.

If you don't come from means or have parents that will help pay for you to move out, then taking on living expenses to study is not exactly a good financial choice.

Personally, I wouldn't change it for the world. Student loans covered the expenses (which as you only pay as a small percentage of your wage above a certain amount and are written off after 30 years if you haven't paid them aren't worth worry about too much), and it had both academic and social benefits. Supervisions often started after 18:00 and occasionally ran on til 23:00, and you could have lectures at 9:00 the next morning, which would be a pain with a commute, and you had easier access to resources (libraries, computing facilities).

I threw myself into the social side, having been fairly reclusive during secondary school - I felt much more comfortable doing so living on site, and I got involved in extra curricular activities I wouldn't have done if I had a commute. I had close friends studying law, natural sciences, economics, engineering, medicine, English, anthropology, and music (I studied computer science), and developed a better understanding of and appreciation for these subjects as a result (I remember discussing Roman law somehow becoming a bizarrely frequent subject in first year). I'm still in almost daily contact with the friendship group I formed there, even ten years on. I did a Master's afterwards, and lived at home, and I never felt as connected to either my studies or my peer group.

Still, I certainly wouldn't call anyone who doesn't do that a coward, and think you could get a similar or better experience living off campus at home. It just turned out to be the right step for me[1] - it pushed me enough out of my comfort zone to grow without leaving me feeling lost - and gave me a much better university experience as a result.

[1] And it was effectively required by my university - you have to live within three miles of the city centre, required permission to live outside of college, and you weren't allowed to keep a car within ten miles of the city centre without permission (https://www.proctors.cam.ac.uk/motor-control)

Your experience is true for some and false for others. That's the nature of anecdotes. I moved off campus to save a couple bucks and be "independent" and "spartan" but I missed out on a lot of stuff. I could have been closer to extracurriculars, I could have joined a frat. I get that not everyone has the resources for this stuff, but many do, and we're missing out on something if they can't experience it.

This is part of the reason why I think the level of investment needs to remain high. College performs a complex task. It can't just be replaced by coursera.

I do think that in-person lectures, course design and such need a total overhaul. Modern technology does change the equation. In-person lectures no longer make sense, for example. That doesn't mean in-person college doesn't make sense.

In theory, you could take your college costs and spend them more wisely elsewhere. Internet age gurus like Peter Thiel, Seth Godin & others have been advocating this for 20 years.

Want to learn business? Take $50k out of the $200k price tag of a fancy college and start a business with a few similarly minded people. Pay a seasoned business person to advise you. After 4 years, you will know much more about business. Same for software engineering, etc. Same for side-effects like networking horizon expansion and everything.

In practice, all that money (whether parental savings to student loans) is tied up with college. The social capital which allows anyone to spend 4 years on abstract "betterment" is tied to college. The safety nets keeping you on course to graduate aren't there.

It's theoretically possible, easy even. In practice, this level of determined heterodoxy is a 1-in-a-thousand thing. Very unlikely to be chosen and very unlikely to bee seen through by a 20-year old.

People operate within structure. We are orders of magnitude less independent than we imagine.

(Also I think the parent meant that the 20-year-old would take $50k from their parents, not $200k. But agree that $50k is likely out of reach for most people in that situation as well.)

Life works this way because life works this way. Social structures exist to reinforce the status quo, and these are only changed incrementally, over a long period of time. Potential college-goers who want to jump the queue and do something radical right now, even if it's a much better thing, are going to have a hard time unless they have well-off parents who are willing to take a shot on them.

If you think about yourself at 18... how likely would you have been to seek out social clubs, conferences, or hobby groups on your own?

I think that would be a great strategy! Spending the money on hobby groups, conferences etc could be put on a resume!

Now thinking of all kinds of options that would give better experience...it seems driving to these might be the bottleneck. But surely there are ones that can subject a student to different opinion/people etc without needing to commute. Heck even a good internship could replace dorm life, and would actually PAY the student.

This is also a description of summer camp.

I went to college late dropped out and then went to college again even later in life.

There are many more job opportunities available to me now. But funny you talk about business degrees I found out I lost a job I was qualified for to a person with a business degree. It was just Helpdesk but the business degree person had no IT experience. It was at a large well-known financial organization.

>I do agree the college format should change completely, go online, etc. I think efficiency should be a part of that.

When I went back to college many of the students younger than me had nothing but contempt for classroom style learning. Some of those people failed within the first semester or early second semester. There's also a strong belief anything can be learned by Googling it. I learned about Course Hero when my lab partner submitted a paper we worked on, I was almost expelled. Knowing something takes effort even if you are handed the answers. You can't shortcut learning because knowledge isn't given it's earned.

That's right. It's like using a lever to lift that barbell isn't going to make you stronger. Training your brain requires effort, just like training your muscles.

I somewhat agree. Sadly, I find that of the degrees offered online, they mostly seem to be either the "underwater basket weaving" degrees or the "online marketing" degrees.

In what OECD countries do students go into crippling debt for their tertiary education? There are only two that I know of, one of which being the USA.

I don't think that the data doesn't really support your conclusion.

I would define "success" or "usefulness" on the basis of something measurable, such as average starting salaries for a given major.

Even if business degrees are "fake" subjects, I believe they have higher average outcomes/starting salaries than most humanities majors.

Seeing as outcome and job opportunities are the real thing that the customers (students) care about, it makes the most sense to look at the actual outcomes, using a measurable metric.

(I'm also interested in improving science)

The incentives (mostly via credit, but also social incentive) for regular college is already super-high... as is the incentive of colleges that receive this credit as payment.

You would need to overcome that with even bigger incentives... creating the same inflation problem, but now for trade schools. If you don't, trade schools have to compete with colleges funded by the ever increasing student loan complex.

Imagine a country that has a suburban housing policy similar to the college education policy. Contractors get subsidies, donations, grants. Buyers have access to easy, no money down, no question mortgages backed by a government. Prices inflate. Houses get bigger. A massive debt pool keeps growing.

You say: "this is really inefficient. Don't some of you want downtown apartments instead?" This isn't going to work while competing with the other housing system... no matter how reasonable the plan is. Throw in a stigma about apartment-dwellers... your plan is now doomed.

Unless students are paying out of pocket (student loan schemes don't count), then you need price controls.